The world is constantly looking for the man who knows the most, and it
pays little regard to those who are proficient in the usual degree in
the same things. One must excel, or, in other words, know more than his
associates in order to succeed notably. The world will bid high for you
if you know more than other men.
[Illustration: THE ROAD TO SUCCESS.]
So that boys and girls who are preparing themselves for the duties of
life should not aim simply at being as good as somebody else, but they
should aim at being the best that it is possible to be in any chosen
line of life or business. I have noticed in my short life-time that
there is a great tendency on the part of young people to cut short their
education. Being able to shine in the intellectual and social worlds
with the small attainments made in some college or normal school or
industrial school, the average young negro man is content to stop with a
diploma or certificate from one or another of these institutions. They
will never realize what injury they have done themselves by so doing
until it is too late. On the other hand, there is another large class of
young people that stop short even before they have finished the course
in even any one of the normal or industrial schools. They must go out to
work; they know enough to make a living; what’s the use of so much
education, anyhow? This is the way some of them talk. This is what some
of them believe. Boys and girls, no man or woman with such low ideals
will ever reach the topmost round of the ladder of fame. Such boys and
girls will always play a second-rate part in the great drama of life.
The boys and girls who are going to the front--the boys and girls who
are going to have the leading parts--are the boys and girls who are
willing to take time to prepare themselves. And preparation means hard
work; and not only hard work, but hard and long-continued work. A person
can learn a good deal in one year; a person can learn a good deal in two
years; but nobody can learn enough in one or two years, or in three or
four years, to make it at all likely that he will ever be sought by the
great world.
Aside from the rudimentary training, it ought to take at least ten years
to make a good doctor, or a good lawyer, or a good electrician, or a
good preacher. Four of these years ought to be spent in college; and
four in the professional school; and the other two ought to be spent in
picking up a practical or working knowledge of the calling--whatever it
may be. The young doctor obtains this practical knowledge in hospitals
and in practice among the poor. The electrician obtains it by entering
some large electrical industry or manufactory, in which a thoroughly
practical knowledge of mechanical engineering and electricity can be
secured. It is true that some men have become distinguished in these
callings without this long preparation of which I have spoken; yet it
is, also, true that they would have been better off--they would have
been more likely to have become eminent--if they had taken the longer
course. College is a little world which every one, other things being
equal, ought to enter and pass through before launching in the great
world.